Rebecca Smith (left) and Hayley Basnett show off their minion eyeglasses on Friday at St. Simons Island.

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ST. SIMONS ISLAND | More than 1,000 University of Georgia students and fans hit the island’s beach Friday for the annual beach party before Saturday’s game in Jacksonville.

And that was before the party, which continues all day, really got started.

With that huge number already on the beach, the revelers kept streaming along the sand from the north and south dragging heavy coolers and carrying big plastic jugs filled with fruity cocktails.

“It’s better than Christmas. It’s Georgia-Florida,’’ Mary Gallagher said as she made her way toward a crowd where red dominated the clothing styles. “We think of it as Christmas.”

“When you get here, everyone is the happiest they’ve ever been,’’ her friend Anna Raines said.

“It’s always fun,’’ said Amanda Busch, who explained her last name “as like the beer.”

But the contents of her plastic container was not like the beer.

“Wild berry vodka and Coke,’’ she said.

A friend recoiled a little and asked why she would mix the two beverages.

“It was available,” Busch said.

At 24, she can mix whatever she likes and not get in trouble.

“I’m in law school. I’m technically supposed to be in class,’’ she said.

The women far outnumbered the men early on and Rebecca Smith of Marietta and Hayley Basnett of Dayton, Ohio, walked around in their big-rimmed “minion’’ glasses. “It our third year, baby,’’ Basnett said.

Smith said the students have their own shorthand version of the Georgia-Florida weekend.

“Gah-fla,’’ she said. “That’s how we pronounce it.”

As the partyers arrived at beach access points, police checked their coolers for glass and handed out trash bags. Volunteers will hit the beach Saturday morning to clean up the mess they usually leave.

A woman with an unopened bottle of wine dumped a big plastic bottle of soft drink and refilled the bottle with the wine.

It was a busy day for the taxi businesses as drivers shuttled students to the two county parks. Many walked a half mile or more from their hotels and condos to the beach party.

There were dozens of Glynn County police officers, Georgia Department of Natural Resources rangers and EMTs watching the crowd. A DNR boat was just off the beach and, shortly before 3 p.m., an ambulance was dispatched to an intoxicated man passed out in an island road.

The police who were closest to the crowd were booed lustily when the music was shut down. It was something about the lack of a permit.

By 2:30 p.m., Massengale Park, which is closest to the party, was closed to vehicle traffic because it was completely filled. Lines had also begun forming at some park rest rooms like those at football games.

A few older adults came to the party, mostly as sightseers.

“Forty years ago was my first Georgia-Florida game,’’ Laura Patridge of Atlanta said as she walked away from the crowd. “We all went to Jacksonville. I don’t know when people started staying on St. Simons for the game.”

Patridge and a friend said they had done a survey and found that the drink of choice for most women party attendees was fruit-flavored vodka.